FALL (DIMENSION Series #1)

CHAPTER 22

We were sitting on the rocks next to the river, without moving, but my head was spinning.

      I was sitting next to Derek Nash, which should have been enough to make me feel off balance. But that wasn't the end of it. The sentences we'd exchanged earlier were milling around in my mind. He knew about my premonition. He seemed to understand things about my fall, and things about me, that had never been spoken out loud. How was that possible?

      Even the river looked different. In the bright sunlight, it had an otherworldly greenish tinge to it. A glimmer.

      I was aware that I was feeling much better now. Healed. I didn't have any pain. How did that happen? I wondered. I remembered Derek touching my shoulder the day before. And how that touch seemed to have unleashed something—a healing kind of heat—throughout my shoulder. What if he truly was magic? I wondered. What if I'd been right all along? About him being special and necessary in my life in a way I couldn't really explain.

      "How are you feeling now?" Derek asked. "Are you still in pain from your fall?"

      I was so startled that I blinked several times. Why would he ask that question at the precise time I was considering my overall state and my lack of pain?

      "I'm fine," I said. "Much better." And I looked back in his eyes. They were lighter shades of green. They seemed to match the color of the river. I wanted him to stay like this—his green-and-gold eyes sparkling was an indicator of his presence. He seemed accessible to me now. Fully present in this moment.

      I wanted to get back to the discussion of before. The one that seemed deep and strange and was about fears.

      "How did you know about my premonition?" I asked.

      "Your nausea prior to your fall," he commented and stared away from me, and into the river. "It seems your nausea was a kind of indicator of something you were sensing."

      "Something I was sensing?" I asked. I didn't quite know what he meant. I hadn't thought about sensing things that hadn't happened before. It wasn't like I considered myself prescient or anything.

      "You seemed to have had a sense that something was going to go wrong," he said and looked over at me.

      "I should have been more injured during my fall," I said. "But something happened. I felt something." The words were tumbling out freely now. Those things I had suppressed ever since they happened. It was because I wanted him to know me, to know everything about me.

      "What did you feel?" he asked and didn't sound surprised at all.

      "I felt myself slowing down as I was falling," I said. "I know it doesn't make any sense."

      "I understand," he said, and his eyes were serious. "Some things can't be explained," he continued. "At least not in this world."

      I registered two things. The first was that he wasn't freaked out by the very strange thing I'd just told him. In fact, he almost seemed to expect it, like he already knew it. And the other thing was his mention of this world. Stated in a manner that might imply the existence of other worlds, not just this one we lived in.

      "Your eyes are the color of the river," I blurted out. Another unplanned sentence from me. But it was too strange not to mention. His eyes had become so light—I'd never seen this kind of transformation before. The current light green color was arresting. But the drastic change of color was too unexpected, it made my head spin all over again.